Everything wrong with the iPhone

Even though the iPhone was introduced over 11 years ago, there are still some issues with the hardware and software that keep it from being the best it can be. Default apps, proprietary cables, and fast charging are just a few of the problems the iPhone still has. Senior tech reporter Antonio Villas-Boas breaks down a few areas where the iPhone could improve. Following is a transcript of the video.

Antonio: It’s been 11 years since the very first iPhone has launched and the iPhone has improved tremendously over that time. However, there are a few things that still bother me, that just sort of don’t really make sense.

The cables. Let’s start with the cables. The new iPhones come with Lightning charging cables. Now, the weird thing is, only the iPhone and iPad use the Lightning cable. It doesn’t work with anything else. Whereas, for example, a USB-C cable, that works with a lot of things. And the other weird thing is, the USB cable doesn’t plug into the new MacBook Pros. I have an iPhone and out of the box, I cannot plug it into the new MacBook Pros. To me, this is absolutely nuts. It’s mind-boggling.

Okay, this is an old one by now. The iPhones do not have a headphone jack. To be fair, not all of the Android phones have headphone jacks. Looking at you, Google, and your Pixel 2s. Say you’ve got wired headphones, what do you do? Well, you use the dongle, right? Okay, so, dongle. You lose a dongle, you gotta buy the dongle again. Say you wanted to charge your phone, while also listening to music. Also, not possible right? Unless you’ve got Bluetooth headphones, but if you have wired headphones, you can’t charge your iPhone and listen to music at the same time. You’ve gotta buy another type of dongle, some sort of adapter. And that’s just not a great experience, right?

Let’s talk about fast charging. Finally, wow! It came with the iPhone, finally. The thing is, though, if you want fast charging with the iPhone, you gotta go out and buy more stuff. You gotta buy a whole new cable, at the very least. And then, you gotta buy a special kind of brick. Extra cost, extra things, more wires, more cables. Meanwhile, the cheapest of cheap Android smartphones come with some kind of fast charging. The Moto G6 for example, $250 smartphone. It comes included with a fast charging brick. Now, it’s not really consumer friendly when you offer a feature but it also involves buying lots of other things for using that feature.

Let’s move on to iOS for a little bit and I want to talk about default apps and your choice, basically. What kind of choice you have as an iOS user. Let’s take email for example. So, you click the email link and it takes you to Mail, even though you have Gmail and that’s your preferred email app. Well, when someone sends you, say, a link to a website, and you tap it, your iPhone will take you to Safari, even if you prefer using Chrome. I feel like I should be able to set whatever app I like for emails or anything.

Something that a lot of Apple people complain about with Android phones is it comes with all this bloatware, all the bloatware, all the apps, and too many apps, and all that stuff. And to a certain extent, that’s true on certain phones, absolutely. But, hey, you know what, actually the iPhone has a bunch of apps too, that you can consider bloatware. The Watch app, TV app is there, the Home app – what if you don’t have a smart home? I mean there’s a lot of bloatware here, right? This is bloatware. Keynote, you know, when are you gonna do a presentation on your phone?

Android is just more efficient with the way you use it. It’s just smarter, it’s just like a better design. Say I wanna go into the Bluetooth settings, change something, switch to a new device, pair with a new device, I have to go into the Settings app. I’ve gotta find Bluetooth here, and finally, eventually get to Bluetooth. But with Android, you know, it’s a quick swipe down and hard tap on the Bluetooth icon and you’re there. It’s not hard, I’m not saying this is like some crazy, terribly designed user interface. It’s just harder than Android.

There’s no such thing as a perfect device. At the end of the day, it just depends on what kind of user you are. But, if you want a little bit more control, if you like to customize more, Android is probably for you. But, if you’re perfectly happy on your iPhone then, hey, stick with iPhone.

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